Should I add Glossika to Linguaphone routine?

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mystlg18
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Should I add Glossika to Linguaphone routine?

Postby mystlg18 » Sat Aug 19, 2017 2:21 pm

Hi everybody. I'm new to the forum here. I started Linguaphone Arabic a little over 2 months ago and have kept a consistent schedule with it. I feel like at this pace I'll complete the course in several months. I looked into Glossika's Modern Standard Arabic course, and it seems amazing. I'm wondering if it would be a good idea to begin working with it simultaneously? I know it's advertised as a supplementary resource and that's what I want to use it as. I already know how to read and write Arabic, and have a decent understand of the Linguaphone lessons once I delve into them. Would this be a good idea? I was looking to delve into Glossika's intense 5 month study option alongside my daily Linguaphone lessons. Please let me know what you think.
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Speakeasy
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Re: Should I add Glossika to Linguaphone routine?

Postby Speakeasy » Sun Aug 20, 2017 10:16 am

First, welcome to the forum!

Second, I would say that opinions vary as to the number of resources one should use at the Beginner's Level of learning a language. Some people prefer the "multi-track approach" for its potential of widening and solidifying the base. In addition, since no single language course can give adequate coverage to every aspect of a language, this approach helps ensure that the user will absorb the its basic elements. Furthermore, it tends to decrease feelings of fatigue, staleness, and boredom that might result from studying with a single resource. Nevertheless, life being what it is, there is risk associated with this approach: the obsessive repetition of the same basic concepts can retard one's progress. So then, while this approach has undeniable benefits, one needs to be aware of its inherent risks and to ensure that it is adopted in a balanced fashion: widen the base, move forward ... widen the base, move forward ... Other people prefer locking into one basic resource, often accompanied with the use of a dictionary and a basic grammar, and stick with it up to the A1 or A2 levels before looking to other resources.

Third, coming back to your specific question, be advised that the creators of the Glossika Mass Sentence files assume that the users have already attained a level somewhere in the area of CEFR A2. No support, other than bilingual transcriptions, is provided. It is expected that the user is sufficiently familiar with the basics of the language such that they will work out any difficulties that might arise. The objective is automaticity. So then, the question becomes "at what time" should one integrate these materials into one's study programme, which is essentially your question. From my perspective, given that the Glossika files contain no supporting notes, using these materials "too soon" incurs the risk of a lack of understanding, of frustration and, finally, of not being able to benefit from them. It is only natural that other independent language-learners have their own experiences and some of them will have (good) reason to disagree with me on this point.

Finally, I am quite familiar with the Linguaphone materials for all of the languages that I have studied and my advice would be that you wait until you are at least half-way through your Linguaphone Arabic course before beginning to use the Glossika Mass Sentence files.
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Re: Should I add Glossika to Linguaphone routine?

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Sun Aug 20, 2017 11:36 am

I'm generally in favour of a multi-track approach/supplementary material. One course may explain a certain concept better, another may focus on a different skill and so on. Speaking of Glossika, it seems that they are reworking their method. See this recent topic - Glossika Product Updates.
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mystlg18
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Re: Should I add Glossika to Linguaphone routine?

Postby mystlg18 » Sun Aug 20, 2017 6:00 pm

Speakeasy wrote:First, welcome to the forum!

Second, I would say that opinions vary as to the number of resources one should use at the Beginner's Level of learning a language. Some people prefer the "multi-track approach" for its potential of widening and solidifying the base. In addition, since no single language course can give adequate coverage to every aspect of a language, this approach helps ensure that the user will absorb the its basic elements. Furthermore, it tends to decrease feelings of fatigue, staleness, and boredom that might result from studying with a single resource. Nevertheless, life being what it is, there is risk associated with this approach: the obsessive repetition of the same basic concepts can retard one's progress. So then, while this approach has undeniable benefits, one needs to be aware of its inherent risks and to ensure that it is adopted in a balanced fashion: widen the base, move forward ... widen the base, move forward ... Other people prefer locking into one basic resource, often accompanied with the use of a dictionary and a basic grammar, and stick with it up to the A1 or A2 levels before looking to other resources.

Third, coming back to your specific question, be advised that the creators of the Glossika Mass Sentence files assume that the users have already attained a level somewhere in the area of CEFR A2. No support, other than bilingual transcriptions, is provided. It is expected that the user is sufficiently familiar with the basics of the language such that they will work out any difficulties that might arise. The objective is automaticity. So then, the question becomes "at what time" should one integrate these materials into one's study programme, which is essentially your question. From my perspective, given that the Glossika files contain no supporting notes, using these materials "too soon" incurs the risk of a lack of understanding, of frustration and, finally, of not being able to benefit from them. It is only natural that other independent language-learners have their own experiences and some of them will have (good) reason to disagree with me on this point.

Finally, I am quite familiar with the Linguaphone materials for all of the languages that I have studied and my advice would be that you wait until you are at least half-way through your Linguaphone Arabic course before beginning to use the Glossika Mass Sentence files.


Thank you very much for your in-depth reply, I appreciate the time and effort you took to respond. I learned a lot from your post. Since I am in no rush, I guess I will begin the process of doing the 5 month intense Glossika schedule after I finish the Linguaphone course. I thought very long and hard about it after reading the replies to my thread here and decided that doing it now would probably lead to burn out in my case. I'm thinking of doing it once I finish the course and move on to other native materials.
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mystlg18
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Re: Should I add Glossika to Linguaphone routine?

Postby mystlg18 » Sun Aug 20, 2017 6:01 pm

jeff_lindqvist wrote:I'm generally in favour of a multi-track approach/supplementary material. One course may explain a certain concept better, another may focus on a different skill and so on. Speaking of Glossika, it seems that they are reworking their method. See this recent topic - Glossika Product Updates.


Thank you very much for your reply. And I went ahead and read the post; it seems very interesting. I really hope they do not change the format of the PDF + MP3 files though, as they are very useful. I enjoy having them in my Anki SRS.
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mystlg18
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Re: Should I add Glossika to Linguaphone routine?

Postby mystlg18 » Tue Aug 22, 2017 2:02 am

I've thought about just typing in Glossika's content into Anki for the meanwhile. I know Glossika isn't designed to implement with Anki, but would there be any possible beneficial outcomes out of doing this?
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Re: Should I add Glossika to Linguaphone routine?

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Tue Aug 22, 2017 9:47 pm

Sure, you review the content, no harm in that. The main difference between the two systems seems to be the intervals; Glossika = decreasing interval, Anki=increasing interval. I'm not sure about the exact numbers here, nor how much that matters to you.
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mystlg18
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Re: Should I add Glossika to Linguaphone routine?

Postby mystlg18 » Wed Aug 23, 2017 2:44 am

jeff_lindqvist wrote:Sure, you review the content, no harm in that. The main difference between the two systems seems to be the intervals; Glossika = decreasing interval, Anki=increasing interval. I'm not sure about the exact numbers here, nor how much that matters to you.


I was so close to finishing the entire thing; meaning uploading everything into Anki and then I just deleted it. I didn't like that I copy and pasted the IPA too and it made the cards look terrible. I wonder if there's another way to do this automatically. The process had taken months since I was so slow at it. I don't think I can go through it again. Do you know if anybody has an automated way to do this? I did find one Github resource but I couldn't follow through with the code since I'm not well versed in computers/programming.
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Re: Should I add Glossika to Linguaphone routine?

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Wed Aug 23, 2017 4:31 pm

Copypaste everything into a word processor (or convert it to a text file), the do a number of Find/Replace commands in order to put the target language in one field and English translation in the next.

How to batch extract sentances and phrases for use in Anki?
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